Corker hopes to end CFPB stalemate

With the Senate locked in a nasty struggle over whether to confirm a chief for the new consumer financial watchdog agency, the Tennessee Republican is angling to broker a compromise, even if that means breaking with his party.

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When Republican leadership earlier this month circulated a letter pledging to block any director to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unless Democrats agree to restructure the agency, Corker was one of two Republicans who declined to sign.

“I’ve been working for a compromise and looking for legislative solutions, so I just didn’t sign it,” Corker said of the GOP letter, noting he has reached out to congressional Democrats and the White House. “I thought it was best to stay off of it.”

But Corker’s promise to look for common ground raises an old question anew: Is he a legislative flirt or a legitimate deal maker?

Corker has tried to broker deals on big issues before — most notably on the 2008 auto bailout and the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law — and if he’s going to bridge the gap this time around, he’ll have to break a pattern of near-miss negotiations and overcome skepticism about his ability to cut a deal.

“The general sense is the guy always talks a good game, but he never delivers,” said one former Democratic Senate staffer.

Corker’s critics say they were snakebit by collapsed deals over the Dodd-Frank and the auto bailout.

In both instances, Corker distanced himself from lead Republican negotiators to open separate channels to negotiate with top Democrats. But both times, after some initial progress, the deals fell apart, and Corker voted against the final bill.

The staffer, echoing a chorus of Senate Democratic veterans who declined to speak on the record, said they were left with the impression that Corker was more interested in creating a bipartisan persona than in cutting a bipartisan deal.

Corker — typically one of the Senate’s more affable members — bristled at the suggestion that his efforts at compromise ended in failure.

“Did I try to do a bipartisan bill? Yes. Did the lights go out when we were on the five-yard line? Yes. Was it unfortunate? Yes,” Corker told POLITICO. “But I’ve said before that I would do it again. I’m here about good policy.”

Monday afternoon Corker released a statement, which his office said was in response to this story, saying that movement toward any deal over Cordray’s nomination rests with the White House.

“I made some suggestions to people at Treasury and the White House as to how they might go about resolving this issue and getting Richard Cordray confirmed,” Corker said in the statement. “We actually had some success in a similar situation with Carol Galante at the [Federal Housing Administration], and there seemed to be an opportunity to do something along those lines here as well. But at this point, the ball is entirely in the White House’s court. By making some modest and reasonable changes to the structure of the CFPB, I think we could have a strong Senate vote confirming Cordray as leader of the organization.”

In an earlier interview, Corker said that in past negotiations even though he didn’t vote for the final bills, he still had meaningful influence in crafting the legislation — a view shared by his former financial reform working partner, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), and some veteran Senate staffers.

In Dodd-Frank, Corker points out, he and Warner collaborated on the law’s framework for dealing with collapsing megabanks, and they were the only bipartisan duo on the committee to come forward with a joint proposal.